The Form of The Means

This 'essay' is taken from my PhD thesis. As it dates back to 1994 it is a little tired now as so much has changed since writing it... but fundamentally the main material remains valid. I have excised, as best I can, forward and backward references to other material in the thesis.

An adjective long applied to computer technology is 'ubiquitous', being everywhere and in everything. As the physical constraints on the size, placement and so on of computing devices has diminished, the already made abstraction that 'computing' is not contingent with a discrete artefact 'the computer', has already led to computing being well on the path to omnipresence, followed rather substantively, possibly curiously, by the computer itself. The residual icon, the general purpose computer, has remained for many disciplines and activities such as computer aided art and design (CAAD) the seminal and defining artefact even after to all intents and purposes it became a collection of computers in a box. Partly this is due to a lack of development criteria, also because the pattern of computer related product development ('computered' forms) has been skewed by economically advantaged software product development (computing products) which owe their success to the stable presence of the 'general purpose' computer.

It is both interesting and problematic to conjecture whether the integrity of what is now the general purpose computer will be sustained. That is to say whether the current division between computered forms such as the watch, the cash vending machine, the answer phone on the one hand and the platform for computing products; the computer artefact on the other, becomes increasingly blurred. That it can is evidenced by computer games machines like those made by Sony, Sega and Nintendo, that there are parameters to it is evidenced by the digital watch overloaded with functions. If the future trend of computing is to infuse the quality of 'smartness' into everything we make then the old fashioned television and the book look extremely limited venues for cultural experience and practice, but how will the channel be tied to the form?

The potential for change is no indication of the actuality of change so views on the future of technology are best treated with some scepticism. But such views do indicate the fragility of the status quo. For example Negroponte expresses a view of computers he considers to be fundamentally different to those commonly held (Negroponte, 1990) and in opposition to the paper and/or clipboard model of computing such as Alan Kay's dynabook,

"My view includes a slightly different mix of form factors and physical embodiments of computers. Many or most will be small objects. . . that intercommunicate with each other. . . agents, great and small, will be distributed all over the place." (1990:348)

He also feels that for various reasons speech will become the dominant mode of interaction. Earlier predictions he has made appear to be validated by research efforts. Tebbutt (Tebbutt, 1991) reports on research projects and activities at the Olivetti Research Laboratory such as the active badge that monitored the location of a badge holder (human or otherwise) providing for an integrated environment of data, objects and people. This is not unlike Negroponte's vision of all knowing rooms (Negroponte, 1980) that we will be able to communicate with and will respond to our presence.

For art and design, from the earliest days of 'computer graphics' the 'hardware' environment did not substantively change for twenty years or so, neither did the perception of what it was. Foley and Van Dam are as authoritative as any other (Foley and Van Dam, 1983) in this respect

"There are four major subsystems: computer, display processing unit (DPU), display device, and user input devices. Associated with the computer are two hard-copy devices: a printer and a plotter. The computer is, of course, the heart of the system." (1983:93)

If there was a major difference of approach visible it was the distinction between interactive and non-interactive modes of operation; whether user's outcomes were as a result of operating hardware or as a result of software programming. On reflection much of the literature of the period which was appropriate to CAAD seemed primarily to deal with the translation of geometry and trigonometry into programme routines (for a not untypical cross-section see Foley and Van Dam, 1983, Bowyer and Woodwark, 1983, Myers, 1982, Lansdown, 1987). During this period CAAD constituted a number of quite distinct sub-divisions of computer art, computer graphics, computer aided design and so on which in general were separable on the basis of their praxiological intentions, software goals and attitudes toward hardware.

The clarity of this phase of CAAD (of a set repertoire of technology, the replication of known processes, the 'translation' of visual things into a scholastic compendium of programme routines) has gradually diminished although I am not sure of the extent to which this is only my perception. Many would no doubt say that the different aspects of CAAD have moved toward greater degrees of industrial relevance and practice, they might say that the technology is more complex and powerful, that applications are better defined. I would contend that (discrete issues of speed, memory and so on apart) this is due to the increased functionality of individual software products related to specific applications e.g. better screen representations in desk top publishing. The function of such software products has not markedly changed simply grown in ambition and grip. As for the 'general purpose' computer platform its functionality has primarily increased to support such software products, again its function has not changed. What has really changed are certain views about the nature of the technology and its cultural place, two views which are both dependent on the cognisance that at some point computer technology changed the degree of its complexity. The turning of the corner was when computing really could be anywhere and when software started to have attitude.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there seems little fundamental criticism of the nature of contemporary CAAD systems but this may well be a result of the fact that their 'fundamental nature' is not itself evident given the propensity for forms of illusion in such systems like simulation. Indeed much of the defence and success of computer graphics has been substantiated on the notion of simulation, by means of metaphor, simile and analogy, simulation has provided new avenues for the cognitive apprehension of dynamic and static form. We make, see and understand 'worlds' on our screens. Deep interpretation of simulation often casts it as a new fusion of language with form. Within the computer a linguistic performance takes place with an object as a constructed or measured referent, whilst simultaneously a 'projection' (implying a world) of the object's state is given visually. In the case of interactive systems the situation becomes more complex as the user's 'reactions' to 'projections' give rise to actions which comprise genuine referents used by the computer.

Whether programmed or interactive this type of computer graphics (and more generally computing) is seen to provide a means by which form can be better dealt with through the use of language. Form with all its material difficulties is 'released' from the real world and becomes a projection still available to the senses by which we apprehend and manipulate it, simultaneously our manipulation and apprehension of form becomes encoded and expressed within a linguistic performance we can influence. Hence within a CAAD system I can have a cube which I might view as an isometric or perspective projection, which I might distort by hand and eye and so on. This now seems an unproblematic expectation of such a system although it has many pasts and futures, Jay points out that drawing and painting styles, indeed all forms of visualisation are closely tied to the philosophical, spiritual and aesthetic sentiments of their era (Jay, 1988). If we take his thesis and apply it to software artefacts we can see in their stylised appropriation of the space, the mark and the object unwitting elements of cultural propagation which will no doubt pass on qualitative notions of construction and appearance to a generation of architects, automobile and product designers, graphic designers indeed all CAAD users.

The attraction of simulation to 'makers' is obvious, yet it incorporates many different levels of knowing and their representation both on the part of the user and within the machine. Most significantly for the user it presents a mediation of perception the user is obliged to engage with, not unlike television, film or photography. However unlike these media there is an implicit prefiguration of our percepts and interaction within the confines of symbol and language explicitly reduced to the level of machine instructions. As 'audience' any cultural reading we might make of computer technology therefore has a strand we would not expect or look for in such an engagement. We have been informed about ideology being implicated in communications, we understand propaganda, but we have no precedent which allows us to reflect that a communication is implicit in the things we use.

It could be said that all practitioners are influenced by experience of the contemporary and that regardless of their witting or unwitting approbation of elements of CAAD, the situation is of itself unremarkable and normal. There are a number of counters to accepting the status quo, firstly we are here actively addressing product innovation and development and the status quo requires powerful evaluation. Secondly I think there is a case for saying that historically artists and designers have not been involved in the use of anything like CAAD ever before, it powerfully immerses them in the un-real, it unjoins their ability to judge things from things as they are. It suspends actions, it has the power of excommunication.

The initial success of the intermediary role of simulation between language and form in areas of application like CAAD and graphical user interfaces has in many ways caused a misrepresentation of what computers properly are or can be. In part this is perhaps due to the fact that the term simulation only encapsulates one aspect of the much greater facility of computers to appear in many guises, often new, if we are prepared to engage with the illusion. We are for example all too ready to classify them as tools when patently they are not; certainly no more than they are libraries, clocks and pigeon post. This is perhaps par for the course, the illusion we are obliged to engage with obliges us to have a false belief as to the true nature of the machine. Similarly the success of simulation has both postponed old problems and engendered new ones to do with language in computing (that is to say the role of software) and language as computing (that is to say the presumption that computers as a technology are fundamentally characterised by and predominantly will be advanced by developments in software). Plauded as an escape from code, instruction, syntax and machine, simulation has lately become no more than a medium for code, instruction, syntax and machine. The inheritance of these problems, manifested in the modern desktop computer is most clearly visible as a proliferation of menu items, casually undifferentiated. A reliance on nomination as the main vessel of signification.

In 1984, Alan Kay, who was involved with seminal work at Xerox's Parc, was quoted as saying of windows that they were ". . . designed so you could understand what they were in five seconds. . " (Durham, 1984). Indeed the approach to the graphic user interface was to see it as a method by which the user could be coerced into constructing myths or illusions about the system and that further, from these myths, the user would be able to predict how the system would behave. This was and remains the general notion underlying user friendliness which has become synonymous, incorrectly, with the adoption of graphical user interfaces (GUI's). The success and development of GUI's is well known but whatever the initial impetus for their development it is clear that the criteria which first informed their development are no longer in operation or if so then in barely visible form. Generally speaking 'user friendly' has given way to 'user adaptation'. Few modern GUI's let alone applications software could be described as obvious, easy, simple and predictable either by a novice or expert user, if nothing else this is attributable to the increased functionality of computers e.g. compare the earliest Macintosh system specification to what is now available (Jennings, 1984).

The tale of software is that it has had the opportunity, through the increased functionality and stable presence of the general computer, to become increasingly elaborate even baroque. Not only have software methods improved but so too has the pool of software as knowledge and as an expression of cultural interest. The consequences of all this will no doubt be revealed historically but one thing is certain, software starts to look like cultural product. Sitting the other side of the window, the user will see programmes as judgments of the way things are and the ways things should be done. As part of an evil cosmology or as an information jihad software now has attitude.

In art and design as in other arts and media the pattern of production and dissemination of cultural product is well understood. The constituent parts of conception, making, retail or showing are generally easily identifiable and in varying degree separable. For each part of the production cycle there are also simple distinctions regarding the appropriateness of intellectual and practical skills, of individual or team effort and of what are the constituents of a product. This is as true of drama as it is of furniture design or fine art. Commonly in these understandings while materiality or medium may be seen as something that practitioners should master it is not generally read that its presence may be hard to detect. Instead invisibility is, in the arts, a phenomenon usually attributed to wheeling and dealing 'behind the scenes', to money, to power and establishment or in some cases to 'technical wizardry'. However in new technology the capacity for the simple raw material of production to be in some way already marked and shaped alters the nature of production. We have already considered the issue of the physical form of computing artefacts and the cultural content of software it now remains to be seen how these might alter the cycle of cultural production and the form of cultural products.

In 1969 authors like Apter were reflecting on the relationship between technology, science and art with a philosophy that could equally be called scientism or artism. Apter discussed the idea of machines as works of art, machines to create works of art, the influence of cybernetics on art thought / language and finally cybernetics as art (Apter, 1979). Some 25 years on his suggestions look distinctly like those of a modernist defining clear opportunities and actions to be taken. The reality of the changes which have taken place in the technology, science, art and design arena have been more complex than Apter could have foreseen. Computer technology could be said to have become in various ways constitutive of artistic and design genres, to have residually a cultural dimension, how different really is 'machines as works of art' to 'works of art on machines'? So too if I consider the analysis, knowledge, method and guidance present in a typical CAD program, when I use it, how far can I call myself 'author'? Apter's musings are appropriate but need new formulation.

It is a fact that in 1969 the speculation and interest that could be had in art / technology fusion was more a matter of playing with language and significances than dealing with commonplace artistic and creative practice underpinned by a phenomenally complex technology, as it is today. What continues to remain pertinent is that self same linguistic blurring, which can alter our understanding of things. Now it is applicable to design as much as art, to retail as much as exhibiting. The cause of the blurring is not a consequence of philosophy nor of cultural strategy it is the combined effect of things ranging from knowledge to pictures, from processes to sound being turned into 'data'. It is then consequently the development of data as both a cultural and economic commodity and the increasing technological bias of developing concepts of function and functionality related to data. Negroponte's notions which blur the concept of the physical presence of computation are compounded by the dematerialization of things to their computered token. This is visible not only in respect of the things which computers act upon but also in the local material environment of computers, so Vertelney and Booker remark (Vertelney and Booker, 1990)

"Until recently, industrial designers designed the product packaging of computers, and user-interface designers focused primarily on software design. But as technology continues to evolve, this distinction will blur. The Lisa and Macintosh computers were among the first to use software commands to replace mechanical switches. Examples of this include: turning the computer on and off, ejecting disks and dimming the screen." (1990:57)

This situation is not simply a recap of what we understand by service industries, the information age is not simply a matter of having more, having new, it is not simply a matter of changed industrial practices and new markets, it is about the loss of materiality, the potential loss of pleasure and wisdom that accrues from handling the real. For some sectors perhaps there has been little to lose and much to gain, in art and design essentially material things; the object and the tool, the hand and the medium, have been the steady centre of practice for millenia, now for those who will work with new technology only the cyphers remain. This may prove to be neither good nor bad but it is certainly new and very different to what has gone before.

Consequently it is interesting to speculate on the way that overall production and distribution cycles in the art and design sector have been changed by the computered product and the computered practice. To give some idea, fairly simple models of production processes are shown below and these are to be compared with a slightly more elaborated version of new technology product production i.e. a data/software product. Throughout the term artefact applies to material things we 'use' and cultural is neither read as high or low.

PRODUCTION PROCESSES

Figure 1 Craft Production

Figure 1 represents the simply understood cycle of traditional craft production. Materials are acquired (from the artefact environment) which are manipulated with tools (production artefacts), a thing is made (cultural product) and becomes an identifiable object in somebody's world (their artefact environment). This is patently the oldest model likely.

Figure 2 Media Production

This next model Figure 2 introduces the scenario for cultural products where the tools of construction are different to say the tools of presentation. This is usually true for cultural products which require a carrying medium such as radio, film and television. Effectively the tools of presentation are reproduction artefacts i. e. in some way they allow us to 'make' the product again although most people would understand the word 'play'. In actuality this means that reproductive technology is usually a limited subset of the technologies used in the production process. The product itself is in a latent state until production/reproduction equipment is running.

Figure 3 CAD Production

Figure 3 is one that might usefully be applied to areas like CAD/CAM or indeed any situation where there is a discernible partitioning of production by a clearly identifiable interim stage involving a 'pre-product' product. In particular where the production technology used for the pre-product is markedly different to that used for the product itself. This is certainly not untypical of the design sector and accords with an earlier distinction drawn between design technology and manufacturing technology. It could be mooted that in fact the use of computers in design processes is often carried over i nto the control of manufacturing equipment and therefore clear distinctions between manufacturing and design technology cannot be made. I would contend however that an industrial manufacturing plant is neither in substance or experience the same environment as that accorded the screen geometer.

There is a feature of computing devices and computation which marks them out from the general run of technology and makes them unique within art and design technology. Whereas previous technology has been an environment and artefactual resource for the development of cultural form computer technology provides an environment for the development of virtual technological products as an antecedent to the development of cultural form. This is perhaps a difficult and no doubt contestable point to understand as it requires us to concede the possibility of what we cannot envision, the unknown forms and genres of an unknown 'technology' within a technology. However that this is a plausible state of affairs is in most ways confirmed by the aforementioned effect of dematerialization. If real mechanical gadgets can become 'soft' mechanical gadgets then a kind of post-analogy era of technology seems inevitable. That is the development of technologies which are not simply mimicry of industrial technology but develop forward from the relation with such copies.

The final production / distribution cycle shown, figure 4, relates to an item of software as the notional cultural product. For the various reasons and circumstances given it is inappropriate to any longer think of such a product in the typical characterisation of a work of art or as the materially independent conclusion of a process of design. It is properly contingent with a cultural / material complex. While the software cultural product remains a goal and will be identifiable by its aesthetic and cultural parameters and whatever context makes it 'readable' it is properly only a part of a system which constitutes a fluid production / distribution system. Because I like Leibniz, we will call the system a production monad for within this system the cultural product has no identifiable beginning or ending, it is complete in itself. The closest systems we have to this model are multi-media ones but as yet such systems are still cast in the 'general computer with I/O devices' mould and the cultural products as encyclopaedic pedagogs.

Figure 4 A Production Monad

In the production monad various features exist which are in our previous models of production and distribution, for example that the appropriation of raw material can still be from an artefact environment external to production technology or that reproduction technology is generically akin to production technology. However production and distribution technologies occupy the same space the reproduction domain and this has new features; the computered artefact environment of smart objects; the computered production artefacts of smart input devices; the software artefact environment, the cyphers which constitute user interfaces; the software production artefact, the user interface appropriate to the goal of the software cultural product. Finally we come to the software cultural product itself which can exist in a distributed manner at any point or points within the reproduction domain. That is to say that the cultural product has the power to alter the nature of 'computered' or change the inflection of software. Structurally its role is akin to the lighting in a film or a chapter in a book although it is as different to them as they are to each other.

The final portrayal of a technological/cultural environment, the production monad, may sound unlikely and subject to the usual frailties of futurology. There are however good reasons to be confident that it will happen, partly because the constituent parts of the environment are already visible but primarily because of the 'general computer'. The general computer, we remember, has problems in the shape of an indeterminate function. Currently it serves as the focal point of interaction with data forms but there is no reason that this should continue because the ergonomic drift of new technology is to maximise the contact requirement of interaction. This requirement is to be in touch with people in as many ways and as many places as possible to maximise the work effort that can be taken from them. New technology, properly post-industrial is placed in a different relationship to the workforce, the Fordian model of the mechanisation of the workforce was to place people by machines, new technology on the other hand is 'placed' by people. The physicality of the computer will therefore be subject to an increasing diffusion because unlike a chair there is no function which will sustain its physical integrity against the pressure of the non-site-specific and non-channel-specific requirements of data interaction. Therefore in the future we are not looking simply at the potential demise of that we characterise as a 'computer' we are looking to the physical diversity and distribution of its progeny. The residual paradigm which will replace the hegemony of the 'computer' is that of the 'network' and although networks are developing apace it is reasonable to observe that until such time as the desktop machine has a humbler role networks remain in phase one. As artists and designers now assimilate and become involved with the computer they sign-up for a more complex future.

The Form of the Means